A Century Of Ghost Stories (1936) is a much extended edition of the previous year’s Fifty Years Of Ghost Stories which includes only the stories listed above the dotted line (i.e., from Le Fanu’s The Familiar through to W. L. George’s Perez).

Grateful thanks to Richard Humphreys who provided us with beautiful dust-jacket scans of the relevant entries. Mr. Humphreys’ Dennis Wheatley site was a forerunner to Bob Rothwell’s, and both can be found at Dennis Wheatley Info. It’s Richard’s listing i’ve referred to for dates and various snippets of information.

1934

Creepy Stories

Humour (ed. P. G. Wodehouse)

Evening Standard Book Of Strange Stories

Sea Stories (ed. Rafael Sabatini)

1935

Love Stories (ed. Gilbert Frankau)

Detective Stories (introduced by G. K. Chesterton)

Famous Trials (ed. 1st Earl Of Birkenhead)

1001 Wonderful Things (ed. Walter Hutchinson)

Book Of The King’s Jubilee (ed. Sir Philip Gibbs)

Horror (ed. Dennis Wheatley)

Boys Stories (ed. Francis Brett Young)

50 Years of Ghost Stories

Girls Stories (ed. Ethel Boileau)

Historical Stories (ed. Rafael Sabatini)

1936

Western Stories (ed. George Goodchild)

Ghost Stories [ed. Dorothy M. Thomlinson ?]

Holiday Omnibus For All Seasons

Holiday Omnibus For Christmas

2nd Century Of Humour (ed. ‘Fougasse’)

Cavalcade Of History (ed. Claud Golding)

1937

Evening Standard 2nd Book Of Strange Stories

Nature Stories (ed. J. W. Robertson Scott)

2nd Century Of Creepy Stories (ed. Hugh Walpole)

1938

The Fireside Omnibus

2nd Cavalcade Of History (ed. Claud Golding)

More Famous Trials (ed. 1st Earl Of Birkenhead)

Even in those instances where an editor is credited, E. F. Bleiler warns against taking the attribution too seriously, so although Dennis Wheatley’s name found it’s way onto the cover of A Century Of Horror he may have had little to do with it beyond providing an introduction. From what we know of his “involvement” in the Dennis Wheatley Library Of The Occult series for Sphere forty years later, this doesn’t sound altogether unlikely. Intriguingly, Bleiler also wonders if Cynthia Asquith had some hand in compiling a few of them, in which case the prime suspect would be A Century Of Creepy Stories. Essentially, …. Creepy compiles the contents of Asquith’s The Ghost Book, When Churchyards Yawn and The Black Cap, loans Oscar Cook and ‘Flavia Richardson’ from the Not At Night series, and throws in a number of genre classics to keep everybody happy.

A Century Of Ghost Stories (1936) is a much extended edition of the previous year’s Fifty Years Of Ghost Stories. The more generous of the uncredited editors is often cited as Dorothy M. Thomlinson.

The Daily Express tried to muscle in on the Century action with two clones A Century Of Thrillers From Poe to Arlen and A Century Of Thrillers – Second Series (Odhams, 1934, 1935)

E. F. Bleiler gives the publication date as 1934. Haining, Aickman, Chetwynd-Hayes and Mary Danby are among those editors who’ve dipped into this one for their own collections, and if you have the Fontana Ghost/ Horror/ tales Of Terror books you’ll already have a fair number of these.

There are 1178 pages of this one. Hugh Walpole has sometimes been attributed editorship of this epic. Be that as it may, the hard work had already been done by others: Essentially, A Century Of Creepy Stories compiles the contents of at least three Lady Cynthia Asquith collections – The Ghost Book, When Churchyards Yawn and The Black Cap – loans Oscar Cook and ‘Flavia Richardson’ from the Not At Night series, and throws in a number of genre classics to keep everybody happy.
The Asquith anthologies would go on to provide the backbone of the Aickman-edited Fontana Ghost books thirty years later.